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Author Topic: Nizhny Novgorod - Ни́жний Но́вгород - Nizhny - Gorky - Го́рький  (Read 6009 times)

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Offline mendeleyev

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Nizhny Novgorod (Ни́жний Но́вгород)





Nizhny Novgorod is often colloquially shortened as Nizhny, and is the fourth largest city in Russia, ranking after Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Novosibirsk. Population: 1,311,252. It is the economic and cultural center of the vast Volga-Vyatka economic region, and also the administrative center of Nizhny Novgorod Oblast and Volga Federal District.

From 1932 to 1990 the city was known as Gorky (Го́рький) after the writer Maxim Gorky who was born there. It was the home of Russia's Ford Motor Company plant starting in the 1930s.





The city is an important economic, transport and cultural center of the nation. There were no bridges over the Volga or Oka before the October Revolution in 1917. The first bridge over the Volga was started by the Moscow - Kazan Railway Company in 1914, but only finished in the Soviet Era when the railway to Kotelnich was opened for service in 1927.





The famous writer Maxim Gorky was born in Nizhny Novgorod in 1868 as Alexei Maximovich Peshkov. In his novels he realistically described the dismal life of the city proletariat. Even during his lifetime, the city was renamed Gorky following his return to the Soviet Union in 1932 on invitation of Joseph Stalin. The city bore Gorky's name until 1991. His childhood home is preserved as a museum, known as the Kashirin House (Russian: Домик Каширина), after Alexei's grandfather who owned the place.





During much of the Soviet era, the city was closed to foreigners to safeguard the security of Soviet military research and production facilities, even though it was a popular stopping point for Soviet tourists traveling up and down the Volga in tourist boats. Unusually for a Soviet city of that size, even the street maps were not available for sale until the mid-1970s.

The physicist and the Nobel laureate Andrei Sakharov was exiled there during 1980-1986 to limit his contacts with foreigners.





Gorkovskaya Railroad (Горьковская железная дорога), which operates some 5,700 km of rail lines throughout the Middle Volga region (of which some 1,200 are in Nizhny Novgorod Oblast), is headquartered in Nizhny Novgorod. Overnight trains provide access to Nizhny Novgorod from Moscow. Since December 2002, a fast train transports passengers between Nizhny Novgorod and Moscow in less than five hours. One can continue from Nizhny Novgorod eastward along the Trans-Siberian Railway, with direct trains to major cities in the Urals and Siberia, as well as to Beijing.





Nizhny Novgorod Strigino Airport has direct flights to major Russian cities, as well as to Frankfurt (three flights a week by Lufthansa). The air base Sormovo was an important military airlift facility, and Pravdinsk air base was an interceptor aircraft base during the Cold War. S7 Airlines goes to Moscow Domodedovo airport daily.





Nizhny Novgorod is an important center of Volga cargo and passenger shipping. In the summer, cruise vessels operate between Nizhny Novgorod, Moscow, Saint Petersburg, and Astrakhan. In 2006 a small number of Meteor-class hydrofoils resumed operations on the Volga river. The city is served by Russian highway M-7 (Moscow – Nizhny Novgorod – Kazan – Ufa), and is a hub of the regional highway network. Public transport within the city is provided by a small subway system (Nizhny Novgorod Metro), tramways, marshrutkas or minibuses, buses and trolleybuses. Electric and diesel commuter trains run to suburbs in several directions.





Nizhny is a dirty city because of the main industries being manufacturing and steel.  However the regional leadership has succeeded in also bringing IT projects to Nizhny and several software companies have been established in an effort to diversity the economy and bring more "clean" industry and jobs to the city.

Offline mendeleyev

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Older parts of city need rebuilt.



Volga river.



Monastery.



Nizhny Kremlin guard tower.



Nizhny Kremlin walls.



Monastery.

Offline mendeleyev

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Kavavinsky bridge



View from Kremlin



War memorial



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See Tram below



Volga River



Hills & Roads
 


Offline TwoBitBandit

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more pictures of Nizhny Novgorod
« Reply #3 on: August 22, 2009, 04:28:48 PM »
These are some pictures of my trip from June.

View of the Kremlin from the river
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View of the shore from on a boat.  The red building in the front used to be some sort of a military barracks.  The wall behind it is part of the Kremlin.
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On the right side you can see one of the Kremlin walls.  That long staircase is named after the Russian pilot Valery Chkalov.  There's a monument to him at the top but it is hard to see in this photo.
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The stairs again.  The Chkalov monument is a little more visible in this photo.  The boat at the bottom is a popular destination for newlyweds.  They often attach paper ornaments to the back of the boat to celebrate.
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This is upriver from Nizhny Novgorod a little along the shore.
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This view is from inside the Kremlin walls looking down at the Volga River.
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Offline TwoBitBandit

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more pictures of Nizhny Novgorod
« Reply #4 on: August 22, 2009, 04:40:05 PM »
This is the front of the Linguistic University on Minin Street where I studied Russian.  This picture was taken on a Sunday, so not many people are around.
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Kvas is a common Russian summertime drink made from fermented bread.  It's about 1% alcohol.  These street vendors sell it all over Russia in the summer.
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This is one of the top walls of the Kremlin right in the center of the city.
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The monument to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valery_Chkalov.  This is at the top of the long staircase in the picture from my earlier post.


Looking down at the Volga from the Chkalov monument.  One Russian girl told me that nobody knows exactly how many steps there are because nobody has been able to go the whole way without losing count.  :laugh:
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The wall of the Kremlin.  In the distance you can see the "lower part" (Нижний часть) of the city across the Oka River.


A street inside the Kremlin walls.
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Walkways within the Kremlin.  There's lots of people walking around up here on warm summer evenings.
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More walkways.  You can see the Нижний часть of the city across the Oka River again.  That particular part of the Нижний часть is called the стрела (arrow) because it tapers to a point.  It's more obvious if you look at a map of the city.
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A view looking down at the Volga from within the Kremlin walls.
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Offline TwoBitBandit

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more pictures of Nizhny Novgorod
« Reply #5 on: August 22, 2009, 04:47:00 PM »
A war monument.


Another monument.
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What Russian city could be complete without an eternal flame?  Did you know that it was actually Russians who won World War II, and that American and British participation was insignificant?  If you have any doubt about that fact, ask a Russian girl and she'll set you straight.   :ROFL: :ROFL: :ROFL: :ROFL: :ROFL:
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Tanks are cool.
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Inside the Kremlin walls.
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Somebody is gettin' married.  Some poor sap is signing up for a lifetime of nagging.  :-*
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She's pretty cute, actually.
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A church on the Kremlin grounds.


I have no idea who these guys are but it was a nice photo.



Offline TwoBitBandit

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One of the Kremlin walls.   This wall is so thick that there's actually a restaurant inside the wall itself.  It's quite interesting to go inside.
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Military hardware is very cool to check out.
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This is the main pedestrian street in the city.  It goes on forever.  For some reason, I found that there were more interesting things to look at on this street than just the architecture...  :saint:
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A fountain in the center of the city.
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This is a monument to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuzma_Minin.  According to Wikipedia, he was a merchant from Nizhny Novgorod, who, together with Prince Dmitry Pozharsky, became a national hero for his role in defending the country against the Polish invasion in the early-17th century.
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A tower in the Kremlin wall.
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A view of the Volga River along the Kremlin wall.
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Looking down at the Oka and Volga Rivers coming together.
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More of the Kremlin.  The Volga is in the background again.
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The Volga.
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Offline TwoBitBandit

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A church on the hill between the Kremlin and the Volga River.


This is a second monument to Minin.  There's a near-exact copy of this same monument near Red Square in Moscow.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monument_to_Minin_and_Pozharsky


The river station.
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Another photo of the Kremlin from a boat.
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These little statues are all over the place on the main pedestrian street.
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This is the drama theater.  It was closed while I was there.  :(
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The pedestrian street again.
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The "Comedia" theater.  Notice the letter "i" in the name of the theater.  That character isn't part of the modern Russian alphabet: it was eliminated in 1918.


This old castle now houses the Nizhny Novgorod branch of the Russian Central Bank.  They're really living a good life being in such a beautiful building.  Ben Bernanke never had it so good!  :laugh:
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Offline TwoBitBandit

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Street vendors on the main pedestrian street.
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Another statue.  This statue of a postman is right across the street from the main post office.
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This is a view of Gorky Park.  You can barely see the Gorky monument in the background.  Nizhnhy Novgorod was named after Gorky for a time but has since changed its name back to Nizhnhy Novgorod.
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Gorky Park
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The Gorky monument.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxim_Gorky


This is a church I came across wandering aimlessly in the city one day.


This is the embankment above the Volga river.
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Offline TwoBitBandit

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TB2 - love to see a few pics of Nizhny if you get a chance...

My pleasure.

Don't say I never did nothin' for ya, man.

Offline mendeleyev

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Nice photos!

Nizhniy Novgorod holds special significance for many Americans. Named "Gorky" during the Soviet period, the city was at one time home to the largest number of the estimated 10,000 Americans who died in Soviet Gulag camps between 1938 and the mid 1960s.

Approximately 4,000 Americans were attached (workers and their children) to the Gorky Ford Motor Company plant and were trapped by politics and war during that period. During the pre-war years there was an American school and cafes & shops which catered to the Ford employees and their families.

After the war the Ford Motor Company misled the government about the true number of trapped employees. When the numbers were discovered Ford filed lawsuits for years to keep any survivors from returning. (Ford had promised employees a new home--worth about $3,000 in the 1930s--and a new car to each family who would spend 4 years at the Russian plant.

The last survivor was held in East and then later West Germany while the lawsuits flew back and forth. Finally it was President Gerald Ford who by executive order cleared the way for the last living survivor (1 of 3) to return to the United States.

Only 3 are known to have survived the camps and 2 returned to the USA eventually. They were children at the time of their families' imprisonment. The 3rd survivor, son of immigrants to America, became a minister of government in the new Czech Republic after the fall of Communism.





Above: American "Ford Motor" baseball team in Gorky (now Nizhny Novgorod), 1934.


Offline mendeleyev

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My computer guy is helping me rescue the hard drive on an older laptop and some nice surprises are coming out--including some photos of various cities.


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Offline mendeleyev

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Offline mendeleyev

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Offline Larry

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The EnglishRussia photo blog has some good photos of Nizhny Novgorod.  Half are current photos and half are photos from 80-100 years ago.  In some cases there are photos of a particular landscape as it appears now and as it appeared a century ago.

http://englishrussia.com/2011/10/24/nizhny-novgorod-now-and-then/#more-72439

Offline Tom Cat

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Shchelokovsky Khutor, a glimpse of traditional Russian peasant life

An open-air ethnographic museum in Nizhny Novgorod features magnificent examples of Russian wooden architecture.

http://rbth.com/multimedia/video/2016/07/26/shchelokovsky-khutor-a-glimpse-of-traditional-russian-peasant-life_615363
Don't shoot the messenger, links to articles posted, don't necessarily reflect my personal opinion.


 

 

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